1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a head unit for carrying on a carriage a plurality of functional liquid droplet ejection heads as represented by ink jet heads and a method of setting the head unit; a drawing system; a method of manufacturing a liquid crystal display device, a method of manufacturing an organic electroluminescence (EL) device, a method of manufacturing an electron emitting device, a method of manufacturing a plasma display panel (PDP) device, a method of manufacturing an electrophoresis display, a method of manufacturing a color filter, and a method of manufacturing an organic EL; a spacer-forming method, a metal wiring-forming method, a lens-forming method, a resist-forming method, and a light diffuser-forming method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a large-sized printer or the like, in view of a yield of functional liquid droplet ejection heads, all (one-line) ejection nozzles arranged in the sub-scanning direction are formed not by a single functional liquid droplet ejection head but by a plurality of functional liquid droplet ejection heads. In this case, the plurality of functional liquid droplet ejection heads are carried on a single carriage, and mounted, as a head unit, on a scanning drive system of a printer.
Incidentally, due to capability of accurately and selectively eject very small droplets from a nozzle array thereof, this kind of functional liquid droplet ejection head can be applied to the manufacturing of color filters of liquid crystal display devices, organic EL display devices, and so forth, and there is also an expectation that the same can be applied to apparatuses for manufacturing various electronic devices, optical devices, and so forth.
In view of such an applied technique, a head unit having a large number of functional liquid droplet ejection heads accurately installed on a single carriage is needed, and at the same time, depending on a liquid to be ejected or the like, the life of the functional liquid droplet ejection heads becomes short, which makes it necessary to give consideration to frequent replacement of the heads (head unit).
The replacement of functional liquid droplet ejection heads, to which are connected cables and tubes from the system side, involves operations for connecting and disconnecting these cables and tubes. Especially, in the case of a head unit carrying a large number of functional liquid droplet ejection heads, the same number of operations as the number of functional liquid droplet ejection heads (the number of nozzle arrays, to be exact) is necessitated for connecting and disconnecting the cables and tubes. These connecting and disconnecting operations are not only troublesome but are also subject to possible causes for a short circuit due to the adhesion to a head board of a functional liquid dropped from a tube during connecting operation or, depending on the functional liquid, to causes for corrosion of the board. Further, the system itself requires provision of a working space for the connecting and disconnecting operations.
It is an object of this invention to provide a head unit which makes it possible to properly and efficiently carry out operations for connecting and disconnecting cables and tubes to a plurality of functional liquid droplet ejection heads and a method of setting the head unit; a drawing system; a method of manufacturing a liquid crystal display device, a method of manufacturing an organic EL device, a method manufacturing an electron emitting device, a method of manufacturing a PDP device, a method of manufacturing an electrophoresis display device, a method of manufacturing a color filter, and a method of manufacturing an organic EL; and a spacer-forming method, a metal wiring-forming method, a lens-forming method, a resist-forming method, and a light diffuser-forming method.